Practical Issues

March 25, 2012

It's spring. How do I know? Because they're cutting the pretty winter lights off the trees in my neighborhood and because my heat was turned off. Sure, China is home to an increasingly large group of bilionaire's happy to pay inflated prices for 'luxury goods' (LVMH anyone?), but the majority of people still lack some basic comforts that Americans take for granted.

1) HEAT

OK, everyone has heat in winter, when you might really die from exposure, but heat is controlled by the government. People pay for it, at a subsidized rate, and there are nationwide dates when it is turned on and off. From November 15 to March 15 there is heat. Today, March 25th, after ten days without heat, Beijing is still in the low 30s at night. Last week the highs were in the 50s. Even with highs forecast in the 60s next week, I doubt my dark little apartment will feel warm.

2) FLUFFY SHEETS

Apparently dryers are a luxury item. I never understood the many ways they make life wonderful before - they suck up all that pesky lint, for one thing. It's amazing how much lint there is on clothes after a good wash. I go through, like, two lint rollers a week. They also make clothes and towels fluffy. My towels always resemble Wasa Crisps after I wash them.

3) INDIVIDUAL EATING

I think the food in China is pretty damn good on the whole and often downright excellent. But I still cringe a little at the practice of using personal chopsticks for sharing communal dishes. This is done at meals between family, friends, business associates, etc. It is convenient and also I think meant to show that everyone at the table is like family, which is a really sweet idea. But I can't help thinking that fewer people would be sick all winter long if this practice was changed. I have occasionally seen tables set with two sets of chopsticks per diner, one long and one short - the long one for bringing food to your plate and the short one for bringing down the home stretch to your mouth. A nice idea but really, who wants to add an extra step if it's not necessary?

4) UNCENSORED INTERNET

Aside from the creepy social implications for a country that tries to censor what it's citizens talk about online, it's really irritating when your #1 search engine (yes, I am talking about the almighty GOOGLE) stops working when you really need to find something for work.

August 16, 2011

The bus can be a great way to get around Beijing. It's cheap and goes just about everywhere.

But be warned:

Most lines stop at 11pm. So does the subway! This is madness in a big city. I have been on the subway when it stopped running. I had to exit at the stop the subway happened to be at - not my stop - and stand in the rain for 45 minutes with all the other passengers as we tried to flag down taxis that wouldn't stop. Not. Fun.

The bus stops have no maps - just a list of stops in Chinsese. Not so helpful for the Chinese impaired.

There is a Beijing bus website in English, but it only really helps if you know the name of your bus stop - and the names make no sense until you know the area fairly well. The stop could be the name of a nearby shopping center, or temple, hospital, bridge, etc.

For most trips you will need to transfer buses and there is likely to be a walk involved - a walk that is much longer than you feel it ought to be.Blocks are long in Beijing. Longer than an avenue block in NYC.

If you do decide to become a bus rider you may want to purchase a copy of the Chinese-only 北京地图, conveniently translated on the cover as BEIJING DITU ( it means NORTH CAPITAL MAP). I was given one in February and despite the lack of English and I felt totally liberated owning it. Half of the book is a detailed map of Beijing and the other half is a (mostly useless unless you read Chinese) list of bus stops by line. It costs about USD2.

I love this book. If you can read a map you can use it even if you can't read Chinese. And if you have time, the bus is a great way to experience Beijing. Yes, the subway is cheap and well marked in English. But it doesn't go everywhere. Taxis are great and relatively cheap, but try getting one to stop for you at night at Houhai. Hah! Of course if you find yourself in that situation the busses will have stopped running anyway and you're going to need to learn to negotiate with black cab drivers. It helps if you know how much it should cost to get where you're going, and it also helps if you know your numbers in Chinese.

Here are some useful phrases for taking the bus:

下车请刷卡 (Xià chē qǐng shuā kǎ). It means 'Please swipe your card as you exit the bus' even though Google translates it as 'Get off your credit card'.

有下车的人吗？(Yǒu xià chē de rén ma?) or 有下车的吗？(Yǒu xià chē de ma?) which means 'Is anyone getting of the bus (at this stop)?' I missed many a stop before I learned to recognize and respond to this phrase (just shout '有!' or '下车!' If you want to get off)

你在...停吗？ (Nǐ zài ... tíng ma?) Do you stop at...? Because it's faster to ask than to look it up in a book. If only you could understand the answer... '停' means yes (stop). '不停' means no (not stop). Because there is no simple way to say 'yes' or 'no' in Chinese.

June 15, 2011

There is a ton of stuff for sale in China. A ridiculous amount of stuff. Stuff with bright shiny balls and spangles and glitter and lights, so many lights. They fill the world with stuff. China is stuff-maker to the universe.

Shoes for sale in Wudaokou and cups at Panjiayuan.

Amazingly, with all that stuff, it's still hard to find exactly what you are looking for. That is why I spent thirty five dollars for a tissue box. That's about thirty-four dollars more than any tissue box in China ought to cost, but I was really tired of looking at the wrinkly plastic containers tissues come in here, so I went to my local fancy Japanese design shop, ZaccaFreeq.

Before

After

Prices in China are based on how much you want an item anyway. Maybe that's why Chinese investors recently spent ten times the high bid prices for some Chinese antiques at recent Sotheby's auctions, and why I feel like I am being ripped off when I am charged three dollars for an umbrella. You start to lose your sense of what a price is when you have to bargain for everything.

May 30, 2011

One of the fun things about Beijing is that shops tend to cluster. They probably cluster in all cities (W. 4th St. for shoes in N.Y.C.), but maybe it seems more fun to me in Beijing because the shops are so unexpected. Near my house, on 阜成门内大街, there are about ten trophy shops all lined up together, selling the greatest assortment of trophies ever. Plaques of all shapes and sizes, soaring glass towers designed to inspire greatness, and brass cups and urns festooned with red ribbons, all awaiting you for customization. Did you win a potato sack race? Cross with the light every day this week? Are you just awesome? Tell me and I will commission an oversized memorial to your achievement.

I find it odd that so many nearly identical shops should survive next to each other. It's as if the shops get lonely by themselves and invite all their friends over. "Hey, I sell locks and keys. You do too? Great, move next door!" Yet another example of communal culture. No one likes to be alone. And maybe they survive because it's really hard to comparison shop when you have to haggle for everything. You can't just walk into each shop to see who has the best deals. I'm not actually sure how people decide which shop to patronize - maybe they know the owner.

I recently discovered Art Supply Street (东四西大街 near 王府井), which was very exciting. I just happened to pass it while going somewhere else in a taxi. You can find everything from Windsor & Newton oil paints to foam core to plaster replicas of famous sculptures. You can get paintbrushes for Chinese ink painting, not the enormous and useless overpriced ones all the decorators want, but actual brushes you can use to make actual paintings. They also have framing services - for one tenth of what it costs to have something framed in the States. I suddenly want to make lots of art, just so I can have it framed.

January 8, 2011

When you travel you notice that things aren't the same as they are at home. The money is different, the voltage is different, the size of the beds is different, the proportions of the license plates, even what they're called (why is it a 'tag' in Florida and a 'plate' in New York?). Standards change almost as soon as you leave your neighborhood.

Living in China, I've been wondering what really is the same everywhere in the designed world. Thanks to a great podcast, A History of the World in 100 Objects, I found the answer - it's number 99 - the credit card! Of course, an international credit market is the only thing powerful enough to create reliable standards.

And yet the ATM machines still operate differently - when I went back to the states a week ago I thought my American ATM card had been cancelled by the bank. Why? Because in China you put the card in the machine and leave it there until you are done with your transactions while in America you swipe it through and immediately pull it out. I forgot. No money for me.

I also manage to accidentally cancel half of my chinese transactions because the English language screens on most ATMs here have three choices after you type in the amount of cash you want : Correct, Confirm, Cancel.

Even though I now know better I press 'Correct'. Of course I entered the correct amount! I know what I want... but the ATM is trying to tell me I can correct the amount I asked for, as in change it. Damn it, it's a verb, not an adjective! Maybe English isn't any easier than Chinese after all...

December 20, 2010

When I moved to Beijing, as soon as I found out there was an IKEA, I went. Tell the cabbie you want to go to 宜家 (yijiā). It's a good name. 宜 is half of 便宜 (piányi), which means cheaper or discount, and 家 (jiā) is house or family - discount house. At IKEA I bought a big orange box that I keep all the bits of paper I can't read in. I bought a lot of other things too, but they don't matter for this story.

I bought a cell phone since my second day in China. It broke a few weeks ago. Up until then the only thing I knew about phone plans in China was how to add money. Just go up to any magazine kiosk on the street and say '中国移动 一百' (zhōngguó yídòng yībǎi), to get a hundred yuan recharge card. You then call 13800138000 (for China Mobile - 中国移动) and type in the PIN number on the card. It took me forever to figure out which number was the PIN since the card always has three or four long mysterious numbers. The one you want is the 密码 (mìmǎ). Don't use the 卡号 (kǎ hào), that's the card number.

To replace my first phone (Sony Ericsson, you let me down), I bought a beautiful brand new android smart phone from HTC. I lost it a week later (Tequila shooters. Don't do them.) My Chinese teacher, who should be sainted, helped me to buy a new one and explained the mysterious workings of Chinese phones to me. Until then I never knew how long it would take to run out of money and I never knew how much I was being charged per minute or per text. It turns out that all you have to do to get different plans for discounted text messaging or data downloads is text the right code to 10086. Text 'YE' (I think it is for 也 yě, meaning also, but I'm not sure) to find out your balance before your phone goes dead. And all you have to do to find out the codes is call the English Operator for China Mobile. Life is so easy when you know what to do.

I also learned that with your PIN number and your passport, you can get a new SIM card with the same phone number as the old SIM card. Genius. But you have to know your PIN number ( 密码). This is where that orange box came in handy. When you buy a phone you buy a SIM card too, right? Well, that little card contains your 密码. DON'T THROW IT OUT. Keep it in your big orange box.

Now I have a new cheaper phone. I thought I would like a phone that is just a phone but I don't. I can check my email, sure, and it has a bad camera and can play music and even has a currency translation function- but I miss being able to locate myself on a map, translate sentences, play crosswords, learn the proper form for hamstring curls, and find out what restaurants near me are popular. OK, OK, YELP probably hasn't come to my neck of Beijing yet, but it will.

October 26, 2010

When my friend came to visit last month he asked why all the escalators run the wrong way - the down being on the left and the up on the right. It's not like England or Bermuda after all, people do drive appropriately on the right side of the street. I asked a few people for their observations and started noticing and guess what - it seems to be a 50/50 mix. Even the escalators my friend notice sometimes run with up to the left, and sometimes with up to the right. I think whoever turns them on in the morning just picks their favorite direction.

The escalator isn't the only place where standards are missing. I went to a model home for a suburban residential villa development (I think every house out of the city here is called a villa and every building in the city is a mansion. I work in a mansion.) recently. The first thing I noticed was that all the kitchen and bathroom counter heights were too low. No one else seemed to notice or care. The floor was some sort of cheap or imitation wood. The bedrooms were tiny. And there was no garage. There were a few oversized chandeliers and the entire enormous master bath had been tiled in great swirls. Luxury, that.

It's even evident in the electricity - China has not one but three standard outlet types. It must be the result of such rapid development - perhaps one developer used an Italian model and one an Australian model before they all decided to get together over tea and baijiu and make some decisions. You really do get the sense all the time that China is jumping ahead quickly - it's only recently that they have been able to enjoy out of season fruits and vegetables year round and now the 'eat local, grow organic' movement is coming.

October 8, 2010

Over the holiday I had a guest staying with me, which was lots of fun and meant that I used taxis a lot more than usual, with varying degrees of success. My biggest tip if you need to get around by taxi in Beijing is to bring a local cell phone, so you can call the place you are trying to get to and have a local communicate with the driver. If you are only in Beijing for a few days, use a tour guide. Really. Why spend your vacation frustrated? I am jealous of London with it's cabbies that know every Lane and Terrace. I do have to say I never feel like a cabbie is taking me on a longer route on purpose. They may start off headed west when you want to go east, but that's only because they are headed to the nearest ring road. I just think it would be nice if they all learned to use a map.

Our longest taxi ride was to the Great Wall at Jinshanling. We were aiming for Simatai and followed a guidebook telling us to take two buses. The first bus was easy to find but when we got off in a small town an hour and a half outside of Beijing to transfer we were told by a swarm of cabbies that the bus we wanted did not exist. I thought this was just a ploy to get us into their taxis, but eventually we realised that, even if the bus did exist, we were never going to find it and we could either take the hour and a half taxi ride to the wall or go back to Beijing. It turns the bus really didn't exist - Simatai is closed indefinately for renovations. So we took the taxi with a very nice young woman named Chris who was filling in for her dad over the Holiday. It was too bad for her but great for us, because she doubtless spoke more English than her dad did.

We needed Chris to take us to the wall and pick us up again, so we negotiated a price and were on our way. When she dropped us off she asked for a little over 2/3 of the full price we agreed on, exactly half the amount she originally wanted. We paid it, because she seemed trustworthy. I exchanged cell phone numbers with her and immediately fely like a dupe for paying so much. What incentive did she have to come back? She had already gotten the price she wanted - why not just pick up another customer and drive back to town, stranding us at the Great Wall with no leverage for bargaining and no sleeping bags?

We weren't stranded. Chris turned out to be a very honest person who wanted to practice her English and she picked us up right on time. I still felt like a sucker, even though she didn't take advantage of the situation and the cab ride was a pretty reasonable price for three hours. Then I read an op-ed piece in the NYT dealing with similar themes, New York Is Yours for the Taking, about senselessly trusting strangers. I like the warm fuzzies I get from trusting people, but I like hanging onto my stuff too. I guess the moral is be nice, but don't be stupid. And be happy there are so many honest cab drivers in China.

September 21, 2010

I brought a dictionary with me yesterday to kungfu class because my teacher's English, although good, is limited in vocabulary, and my Chinese, beyond giving directions to taxi drivers, is pretty nonexistent. It turned out to be more frustrating for my teacher than helpful. He kept trying to look the Chinese characters up the way the Chinese organize their dictionaries, by stroke order. All the strokes that make up the characters are named and numbered. So first you look up the stroke you want, and then the characters are further broken down by number of strokes. Of course I am sure there are more subtleties than that, but whatever it is, my teacher ignored my dictionary and went back to using his Chinese/ English cell phone app.

My dictionary, which is very useful for me, organizes the Chinese words by pinyin. That is the system that looks like English but is hard to read because it was developed based on Soviet pronunciation (even though they have cyrillic, which seems like another step away from the roman alphabet) so the 'x' sounds like 'sh' and the 'c' sounds like 'ts'. But it's still easier than trying to learn the stroke order. Or the strokes, period.

Another interesting thing to see is people typing in Mandarin (or probably Cantonese or any other Chinese language). They type in the pinyin letters for the words they want and a little google-style-search-box pops up showing the most common word. Then there is a dropdown list you can scroll through if you want kĕ instead of kè. When you're finished typing the computer shows the character, not the pinyin. I've tried to copy and paste these characters into google translator to see what they are, but the characters never translate - I just get a pile of weird symbols and zeroes. And when Chinese people try to type something on my computer they usually try a few times to type in pinyin, then sigh and change the settings.

September 12, 2010

I think I have already mentioned that bill paying in the People's Republic is nothing like bill paying in the United States. Today I was sitting at home, working (on a Sunday) thinking that I have no life and should really go out and meet people, when I heard a knock on the door. The last and only other time someone has knocked on my door unannounced it was a pre-census visit. Apparently they come to make sure you live where you say you do first, and then they come back to ask you questions. I am actually very excited that I will be counted in Florida AND Beijing this year! I just added another person to the world population 2010. Hooray. But today the knockee was not from the census bureau, she was here to check my water meter. And ask for payment. Right then and there - get your bill, pay your bill, all at once, no stamp, no envelope, no internet. I am curious what would have happened if I not been prepared with the $20. Had I not been home, I probably would have had a note taped to my door like the one I received for my electric bill. I liked it so I kept it and will reproduce the English part for you here:

Message Note

On patrol duty we found that the electricity amount preserved in your electric meter is - (here there is a blank space to be filled in with a number but no number was filled in) - to be used. Please go to the industrial and commercial bank for purchasing electricity as quickly as you can lest inconvenience is caused.

And then there was a date and a bunch more stuff in Chinese. I really kind of like the convenience of this door-to-door bill paying. And yes, my receipt IS stamped, and in red ink, too.

September 11, 2010

Today was a week ofdiscoveries. Besides sending money home, I wanted to mail a few packages. I bought the things I wanted to send and looked around for a large envelope or box to pack them in - nothing in the grocery stores, nothing in the convenience stores, nothing in the malls. So I thought, maybe the post office sells boxes. I went to my local branch, and sure enough they had padded envelopes in several sizes, but no boxes. Also no stationary - the grocery stores sell birthday cards and notebooks but I haven't been able to find nice stationary sets or envelopes. So I bought an assortment of envelopes at the post office and went home to wrap my things. Since they were gifts, I used the nice wrapping paper I had bought (there are lots of stores that sell wrapping paper and empty red envelopes for cash - but no nice Crane's stationary sets). Since some of the items were oddly sized I used plenty of duct tape to secure the envelopes. By this time it was too late to go back to the post office, which is open Monday thru Sunday, nine to five.

The next day being Monday, I took my packages in to work and went to the post office near work on my lunch break. I took the packages to the counter where they looked at my duct-tape covered packages and then looked at me a little funny and left to go find the english speaking employee. He looked at the packages and said, we have to open those. Ah, of course. What was I thinking? So he opened one and poked through the contents. How do you want to mail this? He asked. Air mail. You have to go to another post office. We can't send air mail from here. You tell me this AFTER you open my package? OK, fine. The post office he directed me to was too far to go on a lunch break so I waited until Saturday, unwrapped all my gifts, and went back to the post office near my house. They poked through my packages again, told me to wait a minute, and went to a back room to discuss things. They could have discussed anything in front of me and I wouldn't have understood, but that's fine. They came back and told me yes, they send things air mail, but not packages as big as mine. I had to go to another post office. They drew me a map.

The next post office was much bigger than either of the other two. Clearly I was in the right place. As soon as I walked in I saw a busy counter labeled 'wrapping service' where people were having their goods boxed up. Aha! No wonder there are no boxes for sale - privacy is not an issue - you just bring your things to the post office and they pick the appropriate box and charge you a dollar or two. It's so obvious when you think about it. So I took my things to the counter and used my 'I don't speak Chinese, do you speak English?' line. They found a guy that spoke English who poked through my things again and told me they would have to re-wrap one of the items and I would have to fill out two forms for each package. Fine. I did all that and they gave me three receipts, all of which said 美国 (Měiguó), America. It means beautiful country, isn't that nice? But one of the packagtes was supposed to go to Brasil - apparently they didn't recognize 'Brasil'. I brought it to their attention and used my handy mini dictionary to find out that Brasil in Chinese is 巴西 (Bāxī). 巴 is a particle that really means nothing on it's own, you use it to make a sentence into a suggestion, and 西 means west. The 'x' is pronounced like it is in Portuguese, by the way. So all in all it was a very informative week.

This week I thought I would try to send some money to my U.S. bank account. With the help of two translators and several bank staff, I eventually figured out that ordinarily one can send up to USD500 a day out of China, but that during the World Expo there is no limit. When the expo ends I will need a letter certifying my employment if I want to send more than that home in one day. Of course, I had to fill out a few forms, which were then stamped in red ink, before I could send the money to my bank in New York. This required filling out my name, which is really four names. Chinese names are two or three compact characters and Chinese forms are designed for Chinese names, so I went with just my first and last names. Now, in the US I have many accounts and they all have slightly different variations of my name, which has never caused a problem. Middle initial, no middle initial, no big deal. Here, I made the mistake of adding my middle initial to one form, and one form only. As soon as the bank figured that out they called to ask if I was the same person in both places. I'm pretty sure I am, most of the time.

The other issue was with my signature. There was a spot on the form where my translator told me to sign. The bank employees weren't so happy with that, they looked at my scrawl with what seemed to me like shock and horror. I re-filled out the form with a neatly printed 'signature'. Somehow I have always thought that the point of a signature was its very uniqueness - sort of like a fingerprint, it is hard to forge and is used as a mark of authenticity. Here, what's important is that your name be exactly the same in every spot - no uniqueness there.They have different ways of signifying authenticity - such as the ubiquitous red stamp. When I went to the post office (see the next post) the woman sending my packages had a huge box of red stamps on her desk to select from. I am thinking about getting a red stamp of my own.

September 4, 2010

All of China has holidays at the same time, so I have known this would be my holiday schedule for a while. Supposedly the days off are so arranged to allow people time to go home to see their families. A sweet idea, and it will be nice to have seven days off in a row, but I still think it's cheating.

The math breaks down like this:

We have 10 (十) "Holiday Days"

That includes 2 (二) days that we normally wouldn't work: Saturday Oct 2nd and Sunday October 3rd.

Now we're down to 8 (八) "Holiday Days".

PLUS we have to work 4 (四) weekend days: Sunday September 19th, Saturday September 25th, Sunday September 26th, and Saturday October 9th.

10-2-4 = 4 "Holiday Days". But they can say we have ten days off. "Holiday Days" shown in green below. Working days shown in red.

月 一 二 三 四 五 六 日

SEPT M13 T14 W15 Th16 F17 Sa18S19

SEPT M20 T21W22 Th23 F24Sa25 S26

SEPTM27 T28 W29 Th30

OCTF01Sa02 S03

OCTM04 T05 W06 Th07F08Sa09S10

The holidays we will be celebrating are Mid-Autumn Festival (中秋节) on September 22nd and National Day (国庆节) on October first.

At Mid-Autumn Festival people exchange 'moon cakes', which are being sold all over town in very attractive packaging. They are very pretty round baked pastries that are traditionally stuffed with lotus seed paste and stamped with good luck characters, but people get creative with the flavors. Even Starbucks is selling them in 'roast caramel truffle' and 'white chocolate macadamia nut'.

National Day (last year was the 60 year anniversary) is celebrated with fireworks.

August 16, 2010

Today's attempt to get to Kung Fu class ended in total failure. Until now I had been living in a happy world of not having to rush anywhere at rush hour. In the morning, I leave my apartment, and I find a sea of available taxis waiting to take me to work. In the evening, I am not in a rush, and I take the bus home and walk 15 or 20 minutes (depending on which bus I catch) back to my apartment. No problem, no hassle, no stress. Today I discovered RUSH HOUR, a hostile land in which there is still a sea of taxis, but they are all full. If they have no passengers, their red light is turned off and they won't stop for little ol' you.

If you click on the 'My Beijing' link at the top of the page you can see how far the school is from where I work. Class starts at 7. Work ends at 6. Of course, it is nearly impossible to leave at 6. Today I rushed and was out the door at 6:07. I hustled down the street to the busy street corner where I tried in vain for about 10 or 12 minutes to find an available cab - finally I jumped on the bus, which I took to the subway, which I took one stop to transfer to a different line. Everyone else on the train was also transferring to the other line. Then I got to my stop, Wangfujing, a busy (too busy!) pedestrian mall, where I dodged and weaved my way to the school, only to arrive 20 minutes late and still needing to change, which would be in traditional Chinese restroom stall mind, which would have taken another 5 minutes.

25 minutes late for an hour and 30 minute class may not seem like a deal breaker, but it's basically pointless if you miss the first ten minutes because that is the warm up. If you miss the warm up (running around in a circle, jumping, twisting, and frog hopping your way across the courtyard), you can't properly stretch (one foot above your waist on a ballet bar, the other foot pointed in the opposite direction), and if you can't stretch you can't do the kicks (all sorts, they must have cool names that I haven't learned yet, like Attack of the Merciless Whooping Crane or Flying Whippersnapper Strikes Again), and then you've missed all the fun and just have the hard work of learning Kung Fu. Kung Fu is hard. I know, duh, right? But it looks easy when the masters demonstrate - just a few twists and turns of the arm or leg. Then you try and you can't remember at all what you just saw. It reminds me of having to learn a choreography in the one modern dance class I took - not what I am best at. But something I really want to do - if only I could get to class on time!

So I caught a taxi and went home. Actually, I stood on another busy corner for 10 minutes trying to catch a taxi until I noticed a line of people across the street at a shopping mall exit - a taxi stand! Five minutes later I was on my way home.

July 28, 2010

Before I left, many people told me not to bring too much – everything in China would be so cheap and I should buy everything there. This was told to me by people who had not been to China. Some things are much cheaper than in the U.S., it’s true. I can’t tell you exactly how much cheaper because 1) I have not been keeping exact records – I have to start writing down expenses each day. Receipts are useless for me, and since I use mostly cash there is no handy statement to look up whenever I feel like it. 2) There are no monthly bills – everything is pre-pay.

So, what is cheap? The food. For $2-5 you can get a pretty good lunch with a drink, or you can get one Starbucks coffee. For $15-$20 you can get a pretty amazing multi-course dinner with a drink or several (beer is cheap; wine is not).I haven’t spent more than that on food but you can certainly spend more – for luxury Chinese restaurants or Western ones. I haven’t explored the upper end. Grocery shopping is cheap too, unless you live in my neighborhood. I love my apartment, but it is in a business district, not in a good residential area. The local supermarket, Olé, sells Cheese from the Netherlands, cookies from Germany, cleaning liquid from Spain, and $3 grapefruits. You can expect to pay every penny as much as you would in the states. It’s also about a 20 minute walk to any subway stop. Things I did not consider when I was told I could sign the lease or start paying for my own hotel (in a nice way, of course). So I usually shop a 20 minute walk away and taxi home.

Utilities are also cheap. I can’t tell you how cheap, see point 2) above, but much cheaper than back home. Rent is maybe 20% cheaper, with rents in nice neighborhoods getting just as high if not higher than, Manhattan. There are some very wealthy people here, and I am in the capital. The rest of China is probably cheaper.

Services like massage and haircuts are cheap. Manicures are cheap (about $3 without polish, double that with polish) but pedicures are not (about $13, no polish, $16 with polish). Subways and busses are ridiculously cheap, taxis are quite reasonable. Cars are expensive, but you won’t be needing one of those. You can get a brand new bike for $30 and a good lock for $5. You can probably get a used bike for $4. There are guys who have bicycle repair shops set up out of their carts on the sides of the road. Very convenient.

Then there are the consumer goods – here you can pay a pittance or an inheritance. Yes, you can buy anything cheaply, but you get what you pay for and you pay for quality, just like in the U.S. Let me just say I am very very happy I came with what I did. Foreign brands are considered ‘luxury goods’ and, in addition to any import duties, have a ‘deluxe tax’ (probably not really called a deluxe tax – the Chinese person telling me this in English used that word though, and I like the sound of it. Deluxe Tax. It’s like Royale with Cheese.) Electronics? NOT CHEAP. Often more than in the U.S.

So, imagine you have just arrived in China and you need work clothes. Can you get something suitable here at a reasonable price? Almost assuredly. You can even afford to have a suit and dress shirts custom tailored. Will you be able to figure out how to do this within a reasonable time period? Almost assuredly not. Beijing is a big town and chances are you neither speak nor read the language. All your normal information systems (phonebook, operator, google maps) are cut off. You are relying on a small handful of bilingual individuals for all your needs. Meanwhile they are helping other non-Chinese-speakers like you who also need their help. Your first priority is doing the endless activities that are required to preserve your legal status in China. Is it a good time to go shopping for the perfect pair of pants? No. I’ve been here a month. I am only just beginning to start to have an idea of how to figure things out. There is shopping everywhere, it's just a question of finding the right shops.

Also, I hear that you can buy things cheaper online - the catch? The websites are in Chinese, of course! And how you pay I don't know - I have not looked into getting a Chinese credit card.

DISCLAIMER: I am a picky shopper. If you are more indifferent to pants than I am, you will probably find a way to pick a pair up between the airport and your hotel.

July 27, 2010

Taxis are cheap. Not as cheap as the bus (15 cents, 6 cents per ride if you buy a special card) or the subway (30 cents), but almost as cheap as the NYC subway. They are plentiful, although mysteriously empty ones do not always stop. Look for a red light in front. They can supposedly take you anywhere in Beijing, and Beijing is pretty large. But just because there are so many taxis, that doesn’t mean it is easy to get where you want to go. It helps if you have the location written down in Chinese, but not always – not every cab driver knows every address, so if it is an obscure location you might want to ask some helpful soul to write down the names of nearby landmarks as well. Now, this really only helps if you already know where you are going – getting within three painfully long blocks of your location won’t help if you don’t know where to go from there, although you could ask the locals and someone will probably know eventually. A Chinese map might help too – I have an English map that I have shown to cab drivers. Once it was very useful and once the cab driver just looked at me with a completely blank expression. Intelligence matters. You might want to keep the phone number of a Chinese friend in your speed dial to babble directions at the cabbie. Also, if you can, memorize the correct pronunciation of the address where you are trying to go – by this I mean, learn the tones! They really do change the meaning of a word from ‘left’ to ‘create’ to ‘sit’. It took me a while before I got someone to write down the tones of my street (which means Peaceful Bridge Street, isn’t that nice?) and I got a lot of blank looks as I repeated the syllables with every intonation I could think of.

Here is my list of Emergency Taxi Chinese:

I am going to…

Wŏ qù…

Please turn left / right

Qĭng zuŏ / yò zhuăn

Turn around

Diào tóu or zhuăn wān (and no I have no idea what the difference is – I asked different people and they told me different things).

Please stop the car

Qĭng tíng chē

Please stop here

Qĭng tíng zhèr

Please stop there

Qĭng tíng nà lĭ (or nà er)

How much?

Duō shăo qián?

Thank you

Xiè xie

I am not going to pretend to be able to tell you the proper pronunciation. Never mind that Beijingers have their own unique accent. You will just have to find someone fluent in Chinese to ask. Also, don’t bother asking ‘How much’? if you don’t know the numbers. Just crane your head a little to look at the number on the meter (you did take an official cab and not a black cab, right?) and add 1 yuan, which is the gas surcharge.

Then, don’t forget to ask for the fābiăo, which is not some hot Brazilian guy, it is merely the receipt.

July 18, 2010

As some of you may have heard, China still operates on cash. I hear tell of restaurants that take cards but I haven’t been to one yet. I have been to two stores that accept plastic – IKEA and Sephora (yes, I broke down and spent $36 for a glorious, glorious hairbrush). Even big expensive department stores don’t always take credit cards. Now, this would be just fine if all my cash was stuffed safely under my mattress, but it’s not. I let big institutions keep it in electronic bits and bytes that may or may not correspond to any real item of tangible value. So I rely on machines to materialize money for me when I demand it. It’s been working pretty well in China so far. ATMs are plentiful. They usually have a 1000-3000 yuan transaction limit (about $150 to $450), but you can often make several transactions in a row. Of course, this way the bank gets to charge you several $1.50 surcharges. Yay for banks!

Anyway, on Friday my cash creation system ceased working. I went to three different ATMs from three different banks, all of which told me some variation of ‘that transaction is not available, contact your bank’. So I went back to my apartment and used my lovely new high speed wireless to contact my bank on Skype. Actually, I tried the ‘International Collect Call’ number first, but I couldn’t get it to work. So, handy Skype to the rescue. The bank told me they had no idea why my card didn’t work, nothing was wrong with it. What can I do? They said. Use CCB bank ATMs they said. OK. Why? No answer. Right. So the next day I went to my normal ISBC bank. And it spit out 1000 yuan, no problem. Then I spent 800 yuan in the bookstore on a CD and book kit to learn Chinese and some book about Chinese food. I spent the rest on a taxi ride to the 5th ring road to see an art show and some food and hangers. One can always use more hangers. This is why I needed 6 suitcases to get here – my closet is full and my walls are decorated. So voila, I needed more cash. Would the ATMs oblige? No! Not even CCB, which told me repeatedly I was using the wrong PIN when I wasn’t. I know my PIN!Don’t tell me I don’t know my own PIN, Mr. Bank Machine. So I went back to my apartment to call HSBC with Skype. Why are all these banks acronyms by the way? I suspect they can change what the letters stand for at will, just like BP. The problem with my lovely high speed internet (did I mention it’s $15 a month?) is that it cuts out regularly. I did finally get through to a representative though, who asked my how he could help. I told him my story and he asked how much longer I would be in China. Two years, I said. Two years. And this wave of homesickness just washed all over me. Then the internet disconnected and I gave up. The next time I used my ATM card, it worked. I got out another round of cash, still working. I tried again but I pushed my luck – your provider has cancelled that transaction. Oh well. I have enough to eat.

July 8, 2010

Ni hao! Sorry I've been MIA for the last few days – I've been exhausted! Monday I went to work in the morning, after waking up inexplicably at 2:30am, and apartment hunting in the afternoon. I loved the first apartment I saw but of course you can't show that you like something because you have to bargain. The landlord for this apartment was pretty tough though, and we (we meaning Jessica*, the translator at Ecoland and the only way I am able to navigate in this strange land) could only knock 200 yuan off the rent. So I am now living in an approximately 600 SF studio apartment with 1 bath, 2 burners, no oven, a refrigerator that is about half the size of an American one, a clothes washer (clothes dryers don't exist – nature is China's clothes dryer, not GE), an air conditioner/ heater, a modest TV, 2 wardrobes, a futon/couch, a small bed, a coffee table (they call them tea tables) that looks like it would be at home with George and Judy Jetson, a desk and a chair, all for about $850 a month. I like it. It has a big window facing East (cool in the afternoon!). The window looks over a big courtyard/ garden, and it’s on the 9th floor. The lobby door is “knocked” (it says so, it's printed on the glass), so I feel secure.

By the way, pictures will have to come in a few days – I have no internet access at home yet and there is only ONE USB port at the office – all the ports on every computer have been broken so that you are forced to go to the IT guy to transfer anything to the server. Big brother is in my office.

So that was Monday. It took a ridiculously long time to get the contract finalized and signed, so I got back to my apartment around 11, exhausted. So no blog that day. Tuesday morning I did better, I slept until about 3:30. That day I had a field trip, which was fun (see next blog post), so I started work at 6:30 and got home around 7. I read a little and fell asleep until about midnight, and then managed to sleep until around 5am. So no blog again. Wednesday, yesterday, I moved my bags from my hotel to my apartment, YAAY! Then I registered with the police. Every foreigner living in China has to register with their local police station. You show your passport and your lease and they give you a little flimsy little slip of paper that you absolutely CANNOT lose. I don’t know what happens if you do but Vanessa seemed worried that I might so she told me 2 or 3 times to make sure I understood. Then we went to the bank to fill up my electricity card. They're not too big on credit here, so you pay for everything in advance. Rent is paid quarterly. For utilities (electric, gas, water) you get cards. You go to the bank and put in as much money as you think you will need (total guess) and then you take the card to a little utility room in your building, put them in the right slot for your unit, and the money is magically transferred. I have no idea how to check how much money is left. I imaging one night I will wake up in a sweat because the air conditioner stopped working and then I will know it is time to refill the card. I also have no idea where to bring my trash. I was so confused by the electricity card thing and the knocked doors that I forgot to ask.

Then there is the problem of finding my apartment. I can walk about 5 or 10 minutes down one block to a bus on another block which I can take to work, but I am not sure which block it is. I can also take a taxi to work, which is OK, but it is hard to take a taxi back – not many cab drivers know the apartment complex. So the real estate agent (who by the way gets a full month's rent as commission) wrote the address with a bunch of landmarks on a piece of paper for me (in Chinese) so that I can show it to cab drivers. They still get lost looking for it. I wish I wish I wish I had a GPS unit. I try to find things on google maps, but google maps works better in Chinese for Chinese addresses – maybe the pinyin translations are unreliable, I don't know, but my office is not in google maps – yet it exists! I have been there! Three times even. Such a confusing world! I also don't have the English address yet – but I don't have a key to the mailbox either, so don't mail me anything. I'll post my work address soon should anyone suddenly have the desire to send me a care package of a decent blow drying brush and some high thread count sheets. I miss you, America!

*Not her real name. Actually, her 'real' name isn't her real name anyway, it's her American name. I don't know what her real - Chinese - name is, actually